AUBURN — Several people were injured when a Worcester Regional Transit Authority bus slammed into a house at 24 Swanson Road Monday afternoon.

Police Chief Andrew Sluckis said a boy was watching television just feet from where the bus plowed into the side of the house, pushing it 5 to 10 feet off its foundation.

The few passengers on the bus were able to use the side exit of the bus to get out, but the driver remained inside for more than an hour. Fire crews from Auburn and Worcester were able to free him, and he was taken by ambulance to UMass Memorial Medical Center — University Campus in Worcester with multiple fractures and facial lacerations, Fire Capt. Eric Otterson said.

Fire Chief Stephen M. Coleman Jr. said a total of eight people, including three children, ages 4 to 10, who were home with their mother at the time, were taken for medical treatment or evaluation. Capt. Otterson said none of their injuries was life-threatening. Paramedics tended to several people on a lawn across the street, while other paramedics tended to the driver from an area near the home's driveway.

Chief Sluckis said that around 5 p.m., the bus was heading west on Swanson Road, toward the Auburn Mall, when it left the road, cut across a yard at the corner of Homestead Avenue, and smashed into the house.

Chief Sluckis said it appeared the brakes were not applied; he said the driver may have suffered some sort of medical problem before the crash, or there may have been a mechanical problem with the brakes. The cause of the crash remains under investigation.

Tow trucks were called to drag the bus out to give paramedics better access to the driver, but they were idled when the building inspector determined the bus was likely holding up the house, Capt. Otterson said. A shoring team went to the house Monday night to prop up the house enough to get the bus out; crews briefly halted their operations as a thunderstorm rumbled through the area. Chief Sluckis said that after the bus was removed, the house would likely have to be torn down. The bus was removed after dark.

The house appeared crooked from across the street. Tire indentations ran across the front yard of the house across from Homestead Avenue, and a granite block was pushed on its side and out of the ground.

Thomas Mosley lives across the street and was home when he heard a loud thud. He went to the front window, and saw the bus "at an angle not with the road," he said.

He said he ran across the street to try to help. He injured his finger getting in through the back porch. He said everyone appeared conscious, with mostly scrapes and minor injuries, although he said the woman who was home with several children and the bus driver appeared to have suffered the worst injuries.

"The bus driver was in rough shape," Mr. Mosley said.

John Carney, general manager of RTA Transit Services, said he was at UMass Memorial with the bus driver's wife, and said the driver was fairly new to the WRTA but had extensive bus driving experience. He did not comment further on the accident and did not give the driver's name.